Scenes of a Tragic Curse
by Astarii Amaranth
Summary: Collection of drabbles in accordance with a challenge. When completed there will be 100. None of these are written with purposeful relation to each other. Spoilers will be present, so read with caution. I update this work each time I complete five.
1. Late Night Company

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**This is a series of drabbles written for a challenge. 100 drabbles/short works from a list of 100 themes. I do this challenge in order, for instance I don't do theme 25 before theme 13.**

**The chapter titles are the actual titles given to the works, and I present the theme in bold above the work. For instance, the work for theme 1 is titled "Late Night Company," and the theme was "Excuse Me," so the chapter is titled "Late Night Company" and right before the chapter, in bold, is written "Excuse Me."**

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Excuse Me  
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"What are you doing here?" Her soft voice was concerned as she timidly stepped through the doorway and approached him. "It sure is late, Hatori." He looked up at her from some medical charts. His sleek black hair was tousled from running his fingers through it too much.

"I had work to do," was all he said, and then he looked back down at the papers on his desk. Without a word she set down her purse and crossed the room. In the background he could hear her stir, and finally several minutes later she brought him a steaming mug of coffee. She offered it to him, silently went to fetch herself a cup of her own.

"You didn't have to," he began, "why are you here, besides?"

"I was coming home from Mayu's and I saw the light on." She said brightly. She approached him again, holding her own mug of coffee close to her face. The steam from it warmed her cheeks. "Excuse me—is this inconvenient? Am I bothering you?"

"No, not at all." Minutes passed in silence then. He scribbled scratchily with his pen, would get up and retrieve papers from a filing cabinet. She simply watched him as she sipped her coffee, now sitting on the chair by her own desk. Half an hour later she checked his coffee—it was cold, the cup half empty. She dumped it out and gave him a new one while he got something out of the other room.

When he came back he took a large sip, gasped at the surprising heat of it. Her eyes grew wide and she exclaimed, "Excuse me, Hatori! I'm so sorry; it was cold and I—"

"There's no need to apologize." He set it down, got back to work. She simply sat and watched him. "Thank you for staying," he offered slowly, his back still to her as he leaned over his desk, "you don't have to. But I…I thank you for your company." She smiled to herself but said nothing.

She watched him as he worked. As he flipped through papers and scratched notes with his pen. He stood up and crossed the room, leant over her desk next to her to retrieve something.

"Oh, I'm sorry, excuse me," she apologized, trying to get out of the way.

"Kana," he said, and she looked up at him, "you apologize too much. It's all right." And he turned from her. She blushed as he went back to his desk.


	2. Isolation

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The Subway

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Yuki filed onto the subway among the other passengers, the crowd thinned at the doors like a funnel. He shuffled through the mass of moving bodies, found a seat and sat down. He sat his package on his lap, held up his wrist and checked the time. It was nearly lunch on this warm Sunday, and he was glad he would be home just in time for Tohru's home cooked meal. He could hear the quiet beat of the music coming from the earphones of the person next to him. He noticed his feet were strangely cold.

He felt remote and removed from the other occupants of the car, untouchable and unapproachable. A sliver of a memory slipped through his mind, harsh words spoken from a young voice that's owner had always seemed immortal to him. _"You're mine, you're my favorite. Don't you feel special?"_ To anyone else they might have seemed kind and warm, but to him they were devastating and left him with feelings of isolation and dread.

Alone, sitting on the subway, he felt a sudden sheen of cold sweat erupt around his neck, his jaw, across his brow. His chest gave a slight clench. Next to him the earphones continued their otherworldly, static tune of techno. The _tappita-tappita-tap-tap-tap_ beat in synch with his heart. He took several slow breaths to calm himself.

It wasn't the same. He wasn't isolated now. But even as he tried to reassure himself that small voice in the back of his mind snickered, _"You sit here amidst the warm bodies of a crowd, and yet you can never become like them, can never truly be with them."_ He shook his head against those negative thoughts that he had never noted on his own. The words had risen within him like Akito was standing behind him, with his venom precise as a snake's.

The train slowed to a stop. The people who were getting off secured their items as he did, prepared to slip out into the city. He tried to shake of his dark mood before starting the walk home, before he entered Shigure's house and sat down to eat lunch with all of them, especially Tohru. As he stepped of the train he muttered to himself, "Kyo thinks he's the most cursed of us all—however I might trade him lives without regret." But he would never admit this to anyone else. Least of all the cat.


	3. A Powerful Word

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Burn

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The sun sets in a blaze of crimson. The clouds are flames of blue, gray, white—and then splashes of orange, red, bright pink, and finally a velvety twilight only just beginning to twinkle with stars. There is no cooling breeze against the humid heat of the summer night, not even the faintest ruffles through the trees, a ripple in the small fishpond.

Akito watches in silence as the world succumbs to darkness, as the reds of the sunset become more vibrant and alarming just before they dissolve to night. It seems the horizon is aflame. She shifts as she lies there on the ground, her kimono, hot and heavy against her skin, slides across her back, slips from her legs. "Let it burn," she mutters, nearly prostrate on the ground, "Let the whole world burn."

"You don't really mean that," Shigure says softly from the door, but his eyes are dark. He's leaning against the frame, his arms folded within his yukata.

"Yes," she spits it like a curse. "I want it all to burn—everything, everyone—to burn." But Shigure merely smiles to himself, his arms still folded, and takes several steps closer. He kneels, reaches out, but Akito recoils from his touch. She hisses, "You too." He leans back on his feet, his rejected hand balancing him on the wooden floor. "I hate you!" She suddenly screams in his face. "All of you!"

"Except Kureno!" he snaps angrily in return.

She dares him, "Don't try to act jealous," and his eyes are on fire as he stares her down. "You don't care!" She exclaims when she can't hold his eyes in silence anymore. His honeyed words and warm caresses had never been sincere and they never would be, but forever he would play the mistreated lover as if he occasionally shared her bed out of love. "All you've ever wanted," she said quietly, "was to be free from the curse. You want me to free you." She is surprised that when she looks up his head is bowed, as if he is truly hurt by her intimacy and favoritism of the rooster. Her heart nearly goes out to him in compassion, but even as she begins to regret her own harsh words he reaches out his hand to grasp her by the jaw. His eyes look at her, filled with hate, and he shatters her heart with one word.

"Yes."


	4. Control Issue

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**Remote Control

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He wasn't comfortable. Not yet. He still was more prone to look at the outside through the window than to go and play in it. He still barely talked, and when he did it was a rushed, intense sentence and his eyes would grow hard and focus on the floor. It would be foolish to think that this place would suddenly become a home for him, that he would run down the halls, shout and play, and that he wouldn't be timid around the tall man who was little more than a stranger with a deep connection to him. But even without much of an expectation his progress into this becoming a home for him was slower than what could rationally, and even shallowly, be expected. He had his own things, his own room, even his own—small as they might be—chores to attend to, but none of these helped to ease the isolation he felt in this unfamiliar place and make him feel more at ease. And he would sit by the window and watch without a word, himself being watched and a heart breaking for him silence.

It had been nearly two months since Kazuma had taken him in. Nearly two months since Kazuma had been his salvation from a family who despised him for a problem not his own, a fresh loss of a mother, and a father who hated him and blamed him for his wife's death. Kazuma watched all of this unfold, remembered a grandfather despised and isolated, and offered himself and his home for a child cursed by the cat. It had been to atone for cruel words spoken to a loving grandfather, also to protect the child from a terrible fate as long as he could, and because his heart couldn't let his family wound the young boy's soul with abuse, neglect, and malicious solitude. And now that he was part of Kazuma's life he had become a warming, albeit lonely light that he would always hold dear.

Kazuma slipped through the front door and slid of his sandals. He walked down a short hall and looked into the main living room. Kyo sat by the window as usual, looking outside. He perked up a bit when he heard Kazuma, turned, and gave the older man a brief, wary smile, which he returned. And then he looked back out the window. Kazuma approached and knelt next to him.

"How are you, Kyo?" The little boy nodded in reply. "School will start soon," Kazuma then commented. Kyo nodded again. And then Kazuma saw that perched on Kyo's lap was the remote for the television. His brows lifted in curiosity. "Is that a remote control?" Now Kyo met his eyes, and his nod was more defensive. "Why, might I ask," Kazuma smiled warmly, "do you have the controller when you're not even watching the TV?"

"Because," Kyo said, his breathing becoming shallower, "then I can if I want to." It was a control issue, Kazuma realized like a stab, and it suddenly made sense. Kyo wanted to be able to be in control of something. He had never been able to control hardly anything in his life, and this television remote, ridiculous as it seemed to an adult, was to Kyo as a child something he could grasp and that was under his control.

"Is that the _only_ thing you can control?" Kazuma thought he could help him by teaching him a small lesson. Kyo would then realize that there were other things, though probably small like going outside, or eating, that he could control and respond accordingly.

But Kyo said, "Yes. The only thing." His little hands were gripping the remote control hard, and his tiny knuckles were white. Kazuma then realized exactly how deep the wounds Kyo had already received from the Sohma's were, and wondered if there was ever a way, any way, that he could even begin to heal them.


	5. Abandoned Once Again

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Behavior Problems

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"I don't wanna go." The little boy stood still, his little body draped in kimono and his little hands clenched tightly together. His head was bowed, his eyes looked straight to the floor. "I don't wanna go," he said once more, and his mother grasped his arm harshly and knelt down next to him.

"How dare you. You have to go. He's summoned _you_. He wants _you_."

"Please—" he begged again, but his mother gave him a soft slap and he was stricken into silence.

"You will go." She said hard and slow so that he'd hear every syllable. She stared down the small tears that had begun to creep out of the corner of his eyes, defying them to call forth any more.

"Where is he!" came the wild shout from down the hall. The little boy, still in the grip of his mother, looked down the hall, his eyes wide and unfocused. He began to tremble.

"Master Akito," said worried voices from the end of the hall, "he's coming. We promise he's coming." A maid appeared, rushed to meet the mother and her terrified boy. She urged them, "Please, master Akito wants him right now. Please hurry!" The mother took her boy and flung him towards the maid.

"I'm sorry," she began, "he was just having a bit of a…_behavior problem_. He's ready to go now." And she turned her back on him and left. The young boy watched his mother walk away as he was brought down to the room at the end of the hall. His lip quivered and his hands shook. The maid flung open the door, and pushed him in.

The slender form of a dark-haired child was silhouetted against the walls of the dark room. The form shifted, turned to greet the newcomer.

"Yuki," Akito said quietly, but the child's eyes were dark and wild, "what took you so long?"


End file.
